To Claim the Long-Lost Lover

by Jude Knight

  It was a question without an answer—all the pain warring with the helpless longing he could still induce, despite their pasts, despite the multitude of ways in which they had both changed.

  “Am I to welcome him to the family?” the duke asked, inexorable. She knew he cared for her, wanted to protect her, but her heart cried, Leave me alone.

  “He wants to explain, he says,” she blurted. “But what explanation can there be? I thought we were married! He told me the wedding was legal, that I was his wife, that he would make all right with my father.” She blinked hard and stiffened her face against the tears. “And then he disappeared and my father told me that he’d lied; that he must have known the marriage was not legal since I did not have my father’s consent to the match.”

  She sighed, remembering that terrible time. “I was ruined and he was gone. They told me he took money to leave, but I didn’t believe them. I thought he must be dead. I was so sure that if he lived, he would come back to me.” The tears spilled down her cheeks despite her best efforts. “But he is alive, so I was wrong. He did not come home!”

  The duke pursed his lips, then took her by the elbow and led her to a chair, handing her a crisp white handkerchief. “I think I need to hear the whole story, dear Sarah. Sit, and explain. When did Bentham wed you, and where? This was, I take it, before Elias was born?” He sat in the chair beside hers, clasping her hand, his eyes still as kind and as calm as ever.

  “It was before Elias was conceived,” Sarah insisted, flushing, because that had been more by good luck than good management. She took a deep breath to compose herself. Uncle James had not berated her for the story so far; had continued to call her ‘dear’.

  “We were at Applemorn Hall in Somerset. Charlotte and I had mumps, and Charlotte was very sick. Mama decided that we should convalesce at Applemorn, where Bath was close enough that Charlotte could take the waters.”

  Her voice softened and she smiled a little. “Nate and I had seen one another on earlier visits. Mama liked Applemorn in summer, and we often stayed there. But he and I did not really meet until that summer.”

  “How old were you, Sarah?”

  “Fifteen, when we arrived. I had my sixteenth birthday while we were waiting... Well, I shall get to that.”

  “And Bentham?”

  “Nate, he was then. Nathaniel Beauclair, the vicar’s son. I knew he had an earl somewhere on the family tree, but his father was not in line for the title. He was—is, I suppose—a year older than me.”

  “So, you came to convalesce and you and Charlotte renewed your acquaintance with the vicar’s son,” he prompted.

  “Me, mostly. Charlotte had been very sick, as I said, and she spent a lot of time sleeping. I met Nate in the woods, and we liked each other. We were both lonely. Nate was expected to act as his father’s secretary and messenger boy, carrying out many of the obligations of the parish. I visited the sick with him, and helped set up the church for services. At first, it was something to do, and then... We fell in love, Uncle James. At least, I fell in love, and Nate said he did.”

  She sat looking into the fire, remembering the heady feeling, the long afternoons discussing a golden future, stolen kisses—no—kisses freely given and received. The duke said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

  “He took French leave of his father to go to Brighton, where my father was, to ask for permission to court me.”

  “Bold,” the duke commented.

  Sarah nodded her agreement. “He had a small inheritance from his maternal grandfather, and he thought he could find work as a secretary.”

  She had warned him that the duke her grandfather had more grandiose plans for her. He had kissed her and assured her of success. “Lord Sutton is your father, my Sarah. He and the duke will want your happiness, surely? God meant us for one another, I am certain of it.”

  Sarah had been right. “My father would not listen. A commoner. The son of a cadet branch of a noble family with nothing to recommend him as a suitor. That’s what Father said when he had him ejected from the house. By the time the mail coach delivered Nate back to the vicarage, Father’s messenger had already been there, and Nate was exiled to a relative in Oxfordshire, forbidden ever to come near me again.”

  He had climbed out the window and escaped up to the manor to tell her the whole. In whispers. “My father told him that he was negotiating with three men as potential husbands for me and Charlotte: the Duke of Richport, the Earl of Selby, and Viscount Rutledge. And if none of them were interested, my father had several friends who might want a young wife.” She shuddered.

  Even Sarah, then a sheltered schoolgirl, had been warned about those three men, and Nate knew more. He was frightened for her, he said. They had agreed that he must obey his father for the moment, but that they would write to one another and discuss what they must do. That night, afraid she would never see him again, Sarah had enticed him to stay the night in her bed and they had made love for the first time.

  The next day, Nate was escorted to Brighton and put on the mail coach to Cheltenham and then to Lechford in Oxfordshire. The day after, the twins’ older brother, Viscount Elfingham, arrived at Applemorn. “Father sent Elfingham to guard me, and to make sure that Mr Beauclair—he is the Earl of Lechton now, Uncle James, but then he was well down the line of succession—to make sure that Mr Beauclair had sent Nate away as commanded.”

  “I take it that Elfingham did not prove an effective chaperone,” Uncle James commented.

  “Elfingham spent several days telling me that Father was arranging a splendid match for me and I was not to ruin it by throwing myself away on a penniless vicar’s son. For the rest of week, he grumbled about being stuck in the country with nothing to do but watch two little girls read books and make daisy chains.” She managed a watery chuckle. “And you may be sure, Uncle, that we were careful to be as childish and as boring as we could. Until he started an affair with our governess and forgot all about us.”

  Poor Bella. Sarah and Charlotte tried to tell her not to believe Elfingham’s promises, but Bella was starry-eyed at captivating a duke’s heir and wouldn’t listen.

  “I take it your swain came up with a plan.”

  Sarah frowned. Nate had been so certain, so convincing. “He and his cousin. He said if we married, our fathers would have to accept it. He arranged it all. All I had to do was be ready to travel to Oxfordshire when he came for me.”

  She had wanted to believe him. “He said he’d had the banns read. He said as long as no one objected, our marriage would be legal.”

  “And he came to fetch you. Surely Elfingham noticed?”

  “Charlotte feigned illness, and was seen around the house wearing a blonde wig. Elfingham never bothered to talk to us, or do more than poke his head around the door to check that I was still there. It worked well enough. We only needed a few days start.”

  They were three days on the road in the hired carriage, hurrying from post to post by day, sleeping in one another’s arms by night. Just sleeping, because it was the time of her monthly indisposition. How gentle, how loving, how controlled Nate had been. Even the last night before their wedding, when she was well again.

  Then they arrived, and within a few hours, they were married, or so she thought. Nate’s cousin had been an unworldly man convinced he was helping in a righteous cause. He was curate in the tiny village of Lesser Lechford. He performed the ceremony and put a cottage at the newlyweds’ disposal. She and Nate discovered the joys of marital intimacy, and they did not stir out of doors for three days.

  “We were married, and spent several days together, but then one morning, Nate said we needed fresh milk and bread, and he left me to walk into the village. He never came back. My father arrived, instead, and told me that I had never been married, and that Nate had taken ten thousand pounds to leave England.”

  Uncle James knew the rest. The pressure to marry, which ended when she discovered she was with child. Hiding the pregnancy and birth from Soci
ety. And all the long years between when she had barely avoided her father’s and grandfather’s matrimonial plans for her.

  “Between your father and Bentham, which would you have trusted to tell the truth?” the duke asked.

  He knew the answer, of course. Her father would say anything that suited his purposes, with no regard for the truth. She had held on for years to the hope that they had driven Nate away, and he would return when she was twenty-one and free to make her own choices. All the time, she feared he must be dead.

  “Nate left, Uncle James. He didn’t write. He didn’t come back. Not even two years ago, when I turned twenty-one and no-one could have stopped me from marrying him again.”

  “Three things give me pause, dear niece. One is that, even seven years ago, my brother would have had trouble laying hands on such a sum. The duchy was living on borrowed money and getting further and further into debt for fifteen years before I came back to England. The second is that your father and grandfather made no real attempt to force you into marriage. Not you, and not Charlotte, either. Many men would accept a duke’s granddaughter without a dowry; some would pay for the privilege, and not mind a past scandal, either.”

  Sarah shook her head, slowly, not sure what to make of it all. Certainly, Father had talked about arranging a match for them both. Grandfather, too, after Father died. But they never mentioned specifics; never actually came up with candidates. She knew why they treated Charlotte so carefully, but why did they let her get away with refusing them?

  Uncle James added, “My third reason to be open to believing your young man is that my father and brother did something similar to me. I planned a marriage that the duke forbade, so they had me beaten and thrown on a ship for the Levant, where I was left with a letter telling me that my beloved had married someone else, and I was forbidden to step foot in these united kingdoms until further notice.”

  Sarah tried to ignore the lifting of her heart. “I don’t know what to think, Uncle James.”

  “I think you need to give your young man the opportunity to explain himself, Sarah. And then we will talk again.”

  9

  Nate was awakened in the middle of the afternoon by the sound of his father, shouting. “Get him up now and tell him Lord Lechton demands he come out here immediately.” Nate’s manservant’s voice was softer—Nate couldn’t hear his words, but assumed he was trying to put the old man off. Nate had instructed he was not to be awakened until it was time to dress for whatever Libby had in store for them tonight.

  “It’s fine, Jackson,” he called. “I am awake. Bring my father a glass of brandy and come and help me dress.”

  “Be quick about it,” Lechton shouted. “You have some explaining to do, Bentham.”

  Lechton was pacing back and forth across Nate’s small sitting room when Nate emerged from his bedchamber less than five minutes later. “You need a shave, and you shouldn’t appear before me half dressed,” Lechton greeted him.

  Nate finished buttoning his waistcoat. “You said to be quick,” he reminded the man.

  “Now, you obey me?” Lechton stamped one foot, looking for all the world like a choleric bull. “I told you to give up this doctoring rubbish. I told you to stay away from the Winderfield woman. I am your father! You owe me your obedience!”

  As far as Nate was concerned, Lechton had ceased to have any rights as his father when he betrayed Nate to the Earl of Sutton and signed the papers to have Nate consigned to the navy.

  Lechton took Nate’s silence in bad part. “You cannot deny it. I saw you leaving that clinic place. I asked questions. You had spent the night there pretending to be a doctor, and you were on your way to the Winderfield mansion with a patient.”

  The old man was spying on him now? Presumably he had been visiting one of the houses of entertainment in the area. Nate should ask him the name of the brothel he’d been at. No. No point in getting into a shouting match to edify all the neighbours. “I will continue to serve at the Ashbury Clinic, my lord, and I intend to reconcile with my wife as soon as possible.”

  Lechton gaped, then gobbled like a turkey, unable to form intelligible words in his anger.

  “Sit down, my lord,” Nate advised, “and take a sip of brandy.”

  His father plopped into a seat. Just as well only a small portion remained in the glass, or he would be wearing it. Nate picked up the bottle and poured a little more, and Lechton took a gulp.

  “I’ll bring you to heel,” he threatened. “I will cut you off without a penny. No more allowance.”

  “The threat would be more effective if you had ever paid me an allowance,” Nate drawled, which prompted another gobble and another gulp.

  “The marriage was invalid. You were both minors,” Lechton insisted, next.

  Nate shrugged. “The banns were read. Neither guardian objected. We were legally wed.” He wasn’t nearly as confident of that as he tried to sound. His seventeen-year-old self had read a case in the papers about a young couple who settled far from where they were known and married that way. The courts had held that the banns had been read in public, allowing the guardians to object, and since they had not done so (even though the reason for their forbearance was that they weren’t there and weren’t told), the marriage was legal.

  Nate had discussed a similar plan with his cousin, doing his best to reproduce the conditions in the newspaper account. Cousin Arthur agreed it sounded reasonable. He knew even more than Nate about the Earl of Sutton’s proposed suitors for his daughters, and was prepared to do anything he could to help keep Lady Sarah from such a cruel fate.

  But neither of the people in the article had a wealthy duke for a grandfather. Winshire might have been able to have the marriage annulled. No matter. If they were no longer married, they could always wed again. If Sarah would agree. If affection between them was reignited as easily as the physical attraction.

  “I have her father’s word. The marriage was invalid,” Lechton repeated. His voice turned pleading. “Forget Sarah Winderfield. There are plenty of younger, prettier girls on the market.”

  “Lady Bentham,” Nate corrected. “She has been my wife these seven years, even though you conspired with her father and brother to part us.” Which was unfair. Lechton had been Winshire’s lackey, not his ally. He was a weak and foolish old man, but not a monster.

  Lechton drew himself up to his full height, still some inches short of Nate’s near six feet. “You are not married. But I shall see about rectifying that immediately. I can see you have no intention of seeking a bride, so I shall arrange a marriage for you, and you can put all this nonsense behind you.”

  “Don’t do it, my lord. I shall not sign any papers. I shall not agree to any marriage you arrange.”

  “You will if you want to see my wife and your sisters ever again.” Lechton sneered, clearly thinking he had a winning hand.

  Nate heaved a sigh. “I would regret such a split, and I hope you will not carry out a threat that would hurt them as much as me. But if that is the price I must pay to keep my promises, then so be it. My man will show you out, my lord.”

  Lechton managed a few more indignant splutters and some other toothless threats before he finally left. The Ashbury Clinic was sponsored by a ducal family, and wouldn’t dismiss him as a result of the bullying of an earl with limited social connections. And the new Duke of Winshire, by what Nate had heard, was a very different man to his predecessor. One, furthermore, who allowed his own daughter to be a doctor.

  Lechton was unlikely to get a hearing from the duke, and what would he say if he did? Nate was no longer the near penniless son of a humble vicar. He had been adding to his investments from his prize money for many years, and could well afford a wife. And the heir of an earl might aspire to the hand of a duke’s daughter, even if he hadn’t already married her years ago.

  Really, Lechton, you are being ridiculous. Nate knew quite well what bee Lechton had in his bonnet. He was convinced a girl fresh out of the schoolroom was mor
e likely to give him grandsons. As if a woman of three and twenty was past childbearing!

  Nate sent his manservant out to buy them both something to eat, and sat down to write a letter to his father’s cousin, the one who had helped him arrange his wedding. Not that he expected a reply. Previous letters had gone unanswered. He’d have to find someone to make enquiries, but meanwhile it couldn’t hurt to write again—perhaps someone had been intercepting his letters to Arthur, as they must have done with those to Sarah.

  The letter done and addressed, ready to be sent as soon as his manservant had time, he leant back in his chair to daydream about Sarah having his child.

  * * *

  Sarah stayed in her rooms when Nate came in the late afternoon to check on the boy Tony. Charlotte could attend the medical examination. Sarah was determined not to see Nate before the next day, as promised. Which meant a disturbed night, full of restless wondering, with steadily more unlikely scenarios floating in and out of her imagination and even more preposterous dreams when she managed to drift into a few minutes’ sleep.

  As a result, she slept in, then ate her breakfast with her sister in their private sitting room. By ten minutes before the hour of her meeting with Nate, she was downstairs. She had chosen to wait, with Charlotte for company and as chaperone, in one of the reception rooms near the front door, the better to keep this meeting on a formal basis.

  This part of the house was strangely quiet. Apart from a footman in the entrance hall, she and Charlotte seemed to be alone, and Charlotte was lost in her own thoughts. Given all her sister had had to say about the Marquis of Aldridge last night—some praise and quite a bit of criticism—Sarah was guessing the man was still very much on Charlotte’s mind.

  Sarah’s thoughts wouldn’t settle. What could Nate—Lord Bentham—possibly have to say in his defence? Eleven o’clock came and went, with no Lord Bentham. He had let her down again. “He isn’t coming,” she said to Charlotte, after half an hour, then a commotion at the front door had her rising to her feet.